


A Group Which Almost Went Mad from the Revelation

by Orlofsky



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Horror, Animal Transformation, Canon Era, Crossover, Dark Comedy, Gen, Pontmercying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-28
Updated: 2013-10-27
Packaged: 2017-12-30 17:16:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1021313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Orlofsky/pseuds/Orlofsky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marius is an accidental time traveler from the sleepy desert town of Night Vale.  Enjolras is an eldritch horror from beyond all human imagination.  Grantaire has been transformed into a monstrous vermin.  It's a good thing Courfeyrac is so understanding.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Marius in the Grasp of the Pteranodon

**Author's Note:**

> Chapters 1 and 2 are two separate fills from the kink meme; Chapter three ties it all together. Thank you to the anonymous prompters that share my ridiculous sense of humor!

In retrospect, Courfeyrac thinks, maybe he should have noticed that something was a bit off about Marius Pontmercy. But it’s not until Marius is badly ill, twisting and turning in the grip of a fever on Courfeyrac’s spare mattress, that things start to get really weird.  
  
"Marius", he says, "If you won’t let me pay for a doctor, let me send for your aunt — what’s your grandfather’s address?"  
  
"No, not there, the rift..!" Marius sits up suddenly and clutches at his shirtsleeve, and Courfeyrac is just about to say something about principle not being that important when Marius could  _die_ , when suddenly Marius goes pale and swoons backward, screaming about blood pacts and holes in spacetime and pteranodons, and Courfeyrac decides that Marius can grump about it later if he wants, but he is definitely calling a doctor.  
  
Marius recovers, and starts going out every night in his good suit again. He even must have been working on his translations while Courfeyrac is in class, because the landlady is complaining about the chanting for the first time in weeks, and sometimes he comes home to find every candle they own arranged on the desk around those weird spidery sigils Marius draws when he concentrates. Marius still avoids him, but Marius avoids everyone, so Courfeyrac isn’t especially bothered.  
  
One evening, he comes home a little earlier than usual and finds Marius adjusting his cravat in front of the mirror, frowning as he tries to tie it so that the frayed ends won’t show.   
  
"It’s hopeless," Courfeyrac laughs as he hangs up his hat. "You should just borrow one of mine."  
  
"Ah, I was hoping I’d run into you," Marius says, as though he doesn’t live with Courfeyrac, as though they wouldn’t see each other all the time if Marius didn’t keep such weird hours. He starts digging around in the chest of drawers, and Courfeyrac  _really_  hopes he’s going to take his advice about the cravat, but instead Marius presses a few coins into his hand. “For the doctor’s bill.”  
  
"If you insist," says Courfeyrac, because he knows Marius will. "You were on Death’s doorstep itself, my friend, and a couple times I almost thought I saw —" But he stops himself, because it’s safer never to acknowledge or speak about the hooded figures he sometimes almost thinks he sees following Marius. "You know, you never did say, and I almost forgot to ask… what’s a pteranodon?"  
  
Marius freezes, and backs slowly out the door with his shabby cravat half untied.  
  
Courfeyrac shakes his head. There is definitely something off about Marius. He’s not even surprised when he picks up Marius’s abandoned cravat pin and discovers it to be a tiny enameled badge, oddly heavy and icy cold to the touch, emblazoned WEIRD SCOUT.


	2. A Charming Old One Capable of Being Terrible

"… And I have heard from Feuilly that three of his neighbors are stockpiling ammunition in the cellar and will come to our aid when needed. But speaking of recruitment —" and the shadowy mass that is Enjolras begins to roil, darkening and thickening like storm clouds — "Courfeyrac, your friend Marius doesn’t come here anymore. Do you think maybe Combeferre was too harsh?"  
  
Courfeyrac opens his mouth to explain, but before he can find the right words Grantaire slides in next to him, his still-hardening carapace clicking against the the wine bottle as he pours himself a glass. “Combeferre was firm but kind, as always,” he buzzes. “It is not his fault that Pontmercy could not be convinced.”  
  
Enjolras freezes, then untenses, and the air in the room takes on a subtle, apologetic undertone of petrichor. An appendage blinks in and out of existence at his side, wavering awkwardly like the tentacle of a jellyfish, until finally he solidifies and touches Grantaire gently on the arm, right at the joint where flesh has become chitin. “I  _am_  sorry,” he says. “If I thought I could undo it without making it worse…”  
  
"Undo it!  I ask you, is it that much of a change?" Grantaire draws away in a sussuration of wings, furling and unfurling his new proboscis in what Courfeyrac assumes is silent laughter. "Enjolras, in a fit of pique, has transformed me into a monstrous vermin in front of my friends at the Barriere du Maine, but is there a single advantage I had as a man that I lack now?  True, I can no longer waltz, but what is a waltz?  A triple step that one cannot dance on six legs, a mathematical contradiction, nonsense.  I was never one for the strict rules of savate, and my extra armor should serve me well in any real contest.   In addition, I can tell good wine from bad with a mere touch, and that makes up for a great deal.  Now, if you’ll excuse me —" he stands unsteadily, exoskeleton chittering as he sways towards the door, "— there is a charming little cigar-seller I must find, who was quite captivated last night by my slight alterations to the tale of Leda and the Swan."  
  
Enjolras watches from the window as Grantaire half-flies down the street and turns the corner without looking back. Outside the cafe, in great drops, a rain that smells like the sea begins to fall.


	3. I Encountered, In the Crawling Chaos Between the Worlds, a Very Poor Young Man who was in Love

"Hardly anyone new ever comes to more than one meeting anymore."  Courfeyrac sighs. He’s taken off his cravat, but his normal careful re-folding has become more of a nervous fidget as he wraps and unwraps it around his fingers. "There’s plenty of men who believe in our cause, and enthusiastically agree to join us, until they meet —"

Marius looks up from the painstaking rearrangement of his bloodstone circle, and blinks.  ”Combeferre?”

Courfeyrac groans, flops backwards onto the bed, and flings his wadded-up cravat at Marius’s head.  ”Of course not Combeferre, you ninny, no one’s afraid of Combeferre except you.  He’s  _said_  he’s sorry, and — oh, won’t you start coming back to the Musain with us?  Even if you're still a Bonapartist, we really do like your company.  And it’s so hard to find friends who don’t go gibbering mad the moment they meet Enjolras.”

"That go — people do that?"  Marius’s jaw drops.  "That’s downright rude!  Going mad before an eldritch abomination should be a carefully considered process, not a spur of the moment whim!  If you don’t study the grimoires, do all the correct chanting rituals — it’s like they’re flaying their own minds for  _no reason at all!”_ He shudders, shifts one of his bloodstones a fraction of an inch, and mutters a quick series of repeated phrases in a foreign language.  It's English or German, Courfeyrac tells himself, and looks away.  English or German.

Another question is eating at his mind, but Courfeyrac waits until Marius completes his odd little ritual and is extinguishing his candles before he asks.  ”How is it that you can meet a formless entity with countless eyes and the power to rewrite reality itself, and stand your ground with enough aplomb to lecture him about Bonapartist politics, yet you’re completely helpless when faced with that sixteen year old girl you won’t talk to in the park?”

"… Urusule," Marius sighs, flinging himself face first onto his mattress and pulling the blanket up over his head.


End file.
